Climbing a ladder system by frequency-chirped laser pulses

Publication

Publication

In this contribution we experimentally demonstrate 100% population transfer in an atomic model system. In a three-step ladder in rubidium we achieved full population transfer from the electronic ground state (5s) to the final state 5d. As a next step towards molecular dissociation we performed experiments on multiphoton ionization of Rydberg atoms with a FIR free electron laser, and observed four-photon ionization in which all intermediate steps are resonant.